


Albion's Greatest Need

by Sproutling



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hugs, Immortal Merlin, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining Merlin, Poor Merlin, Reunions, Season/Series 05, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:02:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4260969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sproutling/pseuds/Sproutling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Until his name, the name no one knew, the name that hadn't been said aloud in centuries fell as a rough whisper behind him.</i><br/>“Merlin.”<br/>And he wasn't an old man anymore.<br/>Or: Merlin is old and alone and waiting for his king to return... but doesn't believe it when he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Albion's Greatest Need

**Author's Note:**

> Something full of angst but with hugs and a happy ending because I will never stop needing a (better) resolution to the end of series 5 :’(

                                                                                       

Over a thousand years and so, so far from home, an old man stood looking out over the water.  Every well-earned crease on his weathered face held within them the years of hardship; of fighting and toil and starving and loneliness.  His family and friends were long dead and he was always reluctant to allow new ones in.  Very rarely, he had.  But even they were gone now and he was alone again.

A truck passed on the road behind him, belching and fuming and noisily trundling towards the town the old man had lived in for awhile now.  He had traveled far – very far – but he always found himself back here, staring longingly out over the water.  He had a reputation around here.  People who said he must be over a hundred by now.  People who wondered why he left as if forever but always returned.  People who wondered what he waited for, staring out over the water.

He couldn't possibly have told them.  Once upon a time he wouldn't have told them because they would never have believed him.  Now... now he felt he didn't know himself.  He was so empty now.  So hollow, for so long. 

He felt so old. 

He used to think he could wait forever, that he would always be filled with that idealism that had so possessed him, driven him, in his youth.  Over a thousand years later and that was all but gone, drained away by relentless _life_.  He had seen one too many wars.  Too many plagues and diseases, natural disasters and man-made catastrophes, good men and women dying.  Children dying.  And each had stripped away a part of him until he was just existing day to day.  The latest hadn't been anything particularly special, nothing he hadn't seen hundreds of times before.  Painful, undeserved death.  He thought he might become numb to it eventually but each time he realised once more that he never would; it would always steadily chip away at his soul and there was nothing he could do about it.  And he had started questioning why.  Why was he to be witness to this endless stretch of time?  Why must he alone bear witness to the horrors life was capable of?  What was the point?

He had lost his heart a very long time ago and would never get it back and, though it had taken him a long time to realise it, he was no longer sure why he was still trying.  Why was he still determinedly struggling on?  Wearily trudging onward alone.  Always alone.

 

An old man leant against a railing overlooking the water and watching as it waved and rippled to the whims of the wintry breeze.  Birds bobbed atop the choppy water, chattering away and ruffling feathers and, as ever, the old man withdrew the two slices of bread he’d packed into his shoulder bag that had been an optimistic sandwich he had prepared that morning out of habit.  Absently tearing away strips with wrinkled fingertips he dropped them to the water, the birds crowding each other to get closer.  His face reflected the detachment he felt inside though his eyes flickered with the faintest hint of interest, the small act of kindness, feeding these birds as he did every morning and the fact that they flew to him on sight before he withdrew any food, these tiny moments were all he lived for now.  And his hollow chest and aching heart felt unused and wasted and so horribly empty.  He wondered if this was what it felt like to be dead.

Pale fingers flicked the last crumbs into the water, the birds still jostling each other noisily though he barely heard it as he let his empty hands drop, elbows resting against the railing as he looked out at nothing.  Saw nothing.  Felt nothing.  There was nothing left.

A hand, huge and warm and strong, fell heavy on his shoulder and grasped the bony knob there.  The old man didn't react, didn't twitch; worlds away and unsurprised by anything life had left to throw at him.  He had long since stopped being shocked.  Stopped caring.  If this stranger wanted to mug him, beat him up for the hell of it, try to kill him with whatever justification he could find, well, it wouldn't be the first time.  He doubted anything would surprise him. 

Until his name, the name no one knew, the name that hadn't been said aloud in centuries fell as a rough whisper behind him.

“Merlin.”

And he wasn't an old man anymore. 

That name, said in that voice stripped him bare in seconds, ripped away the years as if they had never been.  His hard-won experience, his self-protective detachment, the wrinkles lining his brow and white hair and beard; everything melted from him like water and he felt naked.  Shoulders tensed and his newly dark, scruffy head bowed.  Old eyes in his young face closed, Merlin turned away.  Old pain that had eventually, _finally_ dulled was suddenly hot and pulsing inside him and tears he’d refused to shed for fear that they would never stop burned at the back of his eyes.  His voice, largely unused for longer than Merlin could remember, grated from his throat in a painful rasp.

“No,” he denied, less than a whisper.  “You aren't here.  You're never here.”  He had experienced this before.  He would not put himself through this again.  Not now.  He couldn't.  “I can’t.”  Was his own mind betraying him once again?  Would he never get a reprieve, even from himself?

“Merlin,” that hated, very loved, very much missed voice implored sadly.  The hand squeezed on his shoulder as if around his broken, bleeding heart and Merlin’s breath hitched in his chest accordingly.  His head bowed further, turned away as far as possible.  Hallucinations were unpredictable and he hated himself for wanting the hand to remain even as he knew it couldn't last.  Wasn't real.

“You’re not _real_ ,” he murmured to no one but himself, reminding himself.  He heard a noise from behind, hitched breathing, a hallucination choking on air, or a sob.  It didn't matter.  “Have to stop this,” Merlin told himself angrily.  He _knew better_.

“Please Merlin, just turn around,” that voice said.

Merlin drew a deep breath of cold wintry air into his lungs, held it and released it.  Nothing would persuade him to comply and he tried to empty his mind in an attempt to dispel the hurtful illusion.  He’d ripped this wound open enough times to know better than to give in.  Living was hard enough without giving in to old pain.  He’d seen and done much in his long, _long_ life but nothing compared to the day he’d lost the man who wasn't really standing behind him.

As a much younger man he hadn't comprehended what torture it would be to wait for his return and he knew, had known for awhile now, that it may never happen.  The day he lived to wait for may never come, but still he was destined to wait.  To remain.  As if he’d been forgotten.  Nothing in the world could have persuaded him to turn and look at his own projected longing and despair, his purpose forever unfulfilled.  But it wasn't left up to him because the hand was suddenly spinning him, pulling with restrained but firm strength at his shoulder and he kept his eyes closed.  This had never happened before.  But then, he _was_ having a very bad day.  Now there was another hand, one on each bowed shoulder, gripping hard, just this side of painful.

“Look at me,” that voice commanded and the tiniest, saddest smile twitched at the corner of Merlin’s mouth.  He _would_ say that, wouldn't he?  The hands shook him just a bit, the voice beginning to leak frustration.  “ _Look_ at me!”  Merlin’s eyes closed tighter in response, the burn in his chest at this long, painful exposure to what he’d lost making breathing incredibly difficult.

A huff that was achingly familiar and Merlin suspected always would be caused a puff of air against his face and he wondered how close his hallucination was standing.  How far gone he must be to be imagining in so much detail.  He might have worried if he could have brought himself to care enough about any remaining sanity. 

The hands on his shoulders lessened their grip until they just rested there.  _Not much longer_ , Merlin thought, not much longer until he could safely open his eyes and see nothing but the dismally cloudy sky and choppy water and the birds whose noisy chattering and flapping had muted with the arrival of his imaginary long-dead friend.  The noises outside this moment had gone unnoticed and would return, Merlin knew, once this lapse was over.  That thought and all others fled his mind when one of those warm, heavy hands shifted and, never losing contact, slid upwards over his shabbily clothed shoulder to the bare skin where shoulder became neck – Merlin swallowed hard and felt his shudder from head to toe – up the pale column, hovering over his jaw and resting there.

Long, powerful fingers curled and cradled the back of his head, a warm palm encompassed his jaw, as if it were holding something precious and a sword-calloused thumb stroked slowly back and forth over Merlin’s cold cheek.  Merlin stopped breathing.  This was too much and Merlin was almost... scared.  What was happening?  Had he perhaps died and not noticed?  Probably something embarrassing.  He’d probably been hit by that truck and not noticed he’d died – an old man too stuck in his ways to realise the difference.  But he didn't feel like an old man now.  He felt young and raw and impossibly vulnerable.  He felt like crying.  He thought he’d protected himself so well, built his armour so perfectly, so impenetrably.  How could he still be so easily broken apart after all these _years_?

“Merlin,” the name – _that_ name – was a wistful sigh now, as if this illusion was saying it for the sake of feeling the word in his mouth.  Merlin hadn't felt his down-turned lips trembling until there was soft, barely-there pressure, alighting like wings, in flight, gone again in a heartbeat.  “ _Breathe_ ,” the voice whispered and a warm pressure rested against his forehead, phantom eyelashes fluttered, tickling his own eyelids.  The forgotten hand left on his shoulder shifted upwards to grasp his neck and the heat was unbelievable, in every sense.  His will was crumbling but he knew how it would hurt to have to come back from this.  His eyes stayed shut.  His chest ached, _burned_.

“ _Breathe_ ,” the voice insisted, a warm brush of air against his face, a breath against his lips.  _No, no, no_.  The grip against his neck gripped it, fighting for his attention; perhaps.  Fighting not to shake him again.  “Breathe!”

Merlin gave in.  His whole body shuddered and his oxygen-starved lungs expanded in his chest and, entirely without permission, his eyes fluttered open.  Blue.  A blue he had never seen anywhere else, on any _one_ else, since that day.  Light and clear and filled with an eternity of answers and questions and emotions Merlin couldn't handle and he tried very hard not to fly apart. 

Breathing was far more difficult with his eyes open and belatedly he shut them tight, fighting valiantly for calm.  A thumb stroked against him like a brand and his eyes were open again, flickering hesitantly, not yet sure they wanted to be open, to see.  Another thumb stroke and his cheek was suddenly wet, the wind cooling it, hands on his face and neck unbearably hot by comparison.

“You’re not real,” Merlin whispered plaintively, a whine in the back of his throat.  He felt shattered inside and honestly didn't know how he was still standing.  _Not Arthur, not, not, not_ -

“I am,” not-Arthur said back, equally quiet, voice firm and coaxing and unbearable.  Merlin shook his head, eyes trying to convince not-Arthur of his non-existence.   “Why are you always so stubborn?” Not-Arthur asked quietly, fondly, thumb stroking tenderly and Merlin felt the tear it disturbed fall from his eye before the thumb caught it and wiped it away.

 Merlin closed his eyes, unable to stand it, and those hands were pulling his face forward, weaving into his hair and cupping his head, holding it against a solid, strong, _warm_ shoulder.  A shoulder not covered in frigid, unforgiving metal but synthetic fabric, though the smell was achingly familiar and Merlin buried his face in it.  Gave himself over to it.  If this was an illusion, if this was all he got, well... it would likely break him beyond all hope of repair.  This moment, though, was inexorable and he was unable to do anything other than drown himself in it.  The smell and feel and familiarity he had been bereft of for so, _so_ long.

 And not-Arthur wasn't pulling away. 

He was holding Merlin as if he too felt the same level of desperation their separation had caused.  Merlin knew it wasn't possible but, for this moment, he let himself believe it.  There was that pressure again, not of hands but lips against his forehead, and again, a second later, against his hair.

“I missed you,” Not-Arthur said, voice cracking and sounding so _broken_ , and Merlin knew he was a figment of his imagination because that was how _he_ felt, a mirror of his emotions he was sure the real Arthur, the dead and at peace Arthur, wouldn't possibly feel, much less say.  But he clung regardless, fisting the fabric at not-Arthur’s sides tightly, not wanting to let go.  And for a long, indeterminate while he didn't and they held each other, Merlin and his mental breakdown.  Merlin and his non-existent, long dead best friend.  He’d never been able to let go.  He knew he never could, but living with the pain it caused...

His name came again as a sigh of breath against the pale plains of his face and those capable hands moved to either side of the base of his skull as if to direct his head upwards but Merlin just burrowed further into the shoulder, feeling the fabric steadily dampen against his eyes.

“Shh,” Not-Arthur murmured, brushing his fingers through his hair as if calming a horse – the image of which invaded Merlin’s mind along with a million other locked away, centuries-old moments it had hurt him to posses for such a long time now.  His breath hitched in his chest and this time it was a sob.  Not-Arthur’s hands, those big, strong, calloused, dependable hands were against Merlin’s head and back, arms twining around Merlin’s far slighter body and gripping hard as if he could draw Merlin into himself, absorb him into his chest like a second heart and keep him safe there between his ribs.  Merlin clenched his eyes tight and wished fiercely for it to work.

“I don't want you to go,” Merlin mumbled, more to himself and the folds of fabric his face was buried in.  He wouldn't have been surprised if not-Arthur hadn't heard and the fact that he did further convinced Merlin that _this wasn't real_.

“I’m not going anywhere,” came the low, soothing voice from somewhere in his hair, the rumble of which Merlin felt against his face when it reverberated through Arthur’s chest.  Merlin’s back expanded and contracted against Arthur’s splayed hand as he sighed tiredly.  He felt very much like he was having a losing conversation with himself.  Which, he reflected, he was essentially doing.  It was why he was being so honest, no doubt.  Why hide anything from a figment of your imagination?

“No choice,” he replied tonelessly into Arthur’s shoulder, refusing to budge every time the hand still entwined in his hair tried to coax his head upwards.  Now that he’d given in and knowing the pain he would eventually have to face when not-Arthur disappeared he wanted to at least embrace this, this familiarity and comfort and brief escape from the all-consuming loneliness, for as long as he possibly could.

At the thought of being alone again for the endless stretch of forever he’d already experienced and that he knew stretched on before him, Merlin nuzzled further into the fabric of Arthur’s shirt.  He didn't want to let this go, he’d already had to once; to do so again was surely a form of torture.  He felt a sigh against his face and heard it from somewhere above his head, the hands on him drawing him closer, making him feel safer than he had felt in lifetimes.

He didn't think he had felt so safe since his long dead mother last held him.  He felt his eyes prickle at the memories he’d fought so hard to suppress.  So much pain over so many years.  He could barely bring himself to breathe through it.

The air hitched in his chest and he failed to hold in a painful sob that tore at his throat in misery as it left him.  He could feel the fabric against his cheeks becoming wet as the large warm hand on his back rubbed in rhythmic circles and the soothing rumble of a voice began beneath his cheeks.

“Just breathe,” said not-Arthur’s voice from overhead and Merlin noticed he sounded tired... perhaps exasperated.  _He always was_ , Merlin remembered with a pang of fond longing.  He shook his head a bit while digging it further into not-Arthur’s shoulder, unsure if he was trying to clear it or trying to dig his way into him, so that when he disappeared Merlin would disappear with him.  Would that even be close enough?  His hands twisted into the fabric bunched at Arthur’s sides and clenched so tightly his knuckles hurt. 

“I’m really not going anywhere,” not-Arthur insisted, obviously having felt Merlin’s desperation, sadly amused.  “Merlin, please,” not-Arthur implored, starting to sound distressed by Merlin’s clinging and because Merlin could deny him nothing, real or not, he gritted his teeth and braced himself for this to all vanish, for him to fall back into the same lonely, hopeless existence he’d been lost in for so long the second he raised his head.  But he did it anyway.  Because real or not, there was nothing Merlin wouldn't do if Arthur asked it of him. 

When he raised his face away from the nest he’d made for himself in Arthur’s shoulder it felt wet and cold and his tears continued to fall soundlessly, helplessly, unheeded when Merlin was again looking at his long lost king.  Not-Arthur looked similarly effected by the sight of Merlin’s wrecked expression, his eyes skating over his face, flitting from feature to feature as if unable to settle on any one place to rest his eyes.  As if he’d missed Merlin just as much as Merlin had ached without Arthur.  As if Arthur was as deeply wounded as Merlin with the gaping pit inside that Arthur’s absence had torn open.  Which was impossible, Merlin thought blearily, Arthur’s image fuzzy at the edges because of yet unshed tears; because no one could miss anyone as much as he’d missed Arthur.

Something in Merlin’s expression must have said as much because Arthur’s hands were suddenly cupping his face – so warm, alive – and he looked pleadingly into Merlin’s eyes as if willing him to understand.

“I’m _real_.  I’m _here_ ,” but Merlin shook his head, feeling dazed and fuzzy around the edges himself.

“Can’t yet,” he murmured hoarsely, willing not-Arthur to understand how impossible his existence was.  “Have to wait,” he said, even quieter, speaking to both of them, trying to convince both of them.  Arthur’s thumbs stroked, painfully gentle, beneath his eyes, catching tears.

“You did wait, you waited so long and now I’m back,” not-Arthur tried to convince Merlin.  Merlin stubbornly shook his head again.

“Albion’s greatest need,” he rasped out because _this wasn't real_.

“Yes Merlin,” and the agreement nearly broke him because the real Arthur didn't know the prophecies which meant he wasn't real and Merlin was alone and damn it all, a small part of him had been beginning to hope this could be real. “And you, the heart and soul of Albion, needed me,” Arthur finished firmly and with great conviction.  Merlin stared, startled into stillness by the unexpected argument.  Arthur lowered his head just a little, as if to meet Merlin’s eyes more intensely than before.  “You were losing yourself,” he said quietly, not judging but infinitely sad.  Merlin stared.  He shook his head in dazed denial.

“No... I...” Arthur’s gaze never left his and it was so sad, but it was sad for him.  Merlin couldn't construct a proper thought for such a hopelessly awaited moment; it didn't feel real and he was struggling to comprehend anything beyond Arthur’s eyes finally, finally looking back and his own wrecked voice in his head and possibly out loud repeating ‘here.  He’s here.  Here, here, here.’

Arthur’s fingers were stroking beneath Merlin’s eyes again, softly, lingeringly; for no other purpose than to touch.  Connect.  Merlin didn’t know whose benefit it was for but took comfort from it.  From the warmth and skin on skin, the knowledge that, for the first time in many lifetimes he might not have to be alone anymore; he didn’t trust himself anymore.  But he trusted in Arthur.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m gonna leave it up to you, is he real or has Merlin been living without him too long... to me he’s real and they live happily ever after and this is one of very few scenarios I would have been happy with for the end of the series. But no, don’t listen to me BBC, you just continue ripping our souls into itty bitty pieces.  
> Thanks for reading this long, self-indulgent therapy session of a fic and let me know what you think, I've been chickening out for a couple years with posting this one so hopefully I've weeded out any mistakes in all the time spent anxiously picking over it :/


End file.
